Pilot, prepare for expedited egress:

[calmloki]

Dis-Mount!

Photoblog - Pilot ejects an instant before fighterjet crashes

 

[REWahoo]

Procrastination in action. Another half second and he would have been a human lawn dart.

 

[Westernskies]

Procrastination in action. Another half second and he would have been a flaming human lawn dart.

fixed it for you....

 

[travelover]

At least he couldn't be accused of premature ejectulation.

 

[Koolau]

Reminds me of footage they have shown several times on (IIRC) Hist. Chan. Two Russian pilots clip each others wings at an air show; both planes crash in huge fireballs. Then, you see the parachutes. Soon, you see a pilot, in full flight suit walking out of the smoke, carrying his helmet. He pauses, lights up a cigarette, and saunters on. This guy was cool (Kool?). It occurred to me upon at least one viewing that reminding this particular pilot that smoking was bad for his health was a bit redundant.

 

[ls99]

The maneuvre as described in AVweb:

In advance of the weekend airshow, Bews was practicing a maneuver called the High Alpha Path when witnesses say they saw sparks coming from one of the engines and heard loud "popping noises." The High Alpha Path is a maximum angle of attack/minimum speed maneuver that relies on engine power to keep the aircraft stable. "I noticed it start to bank a little bit off to one side, which I kind of thought was unusual and I saw a couple of pops and all of a sudden this plane just banked and slowly dropped into the ground into this huge orange ball of fire," said Lethbridge Herald photographer Ian Martens, who took these jaw-dropping images.

UPDATE:
Captain Bews was treated for minor scrapes and has a sore back but was released from the hospital on Friday.

 

[REWahoo]

UPDATE:
Captain Bews was treated for minor scrapes and has a sore back but was released from the hospital on Friday.

Wonder if his back injury was related to the whiplash it looks like he suffered in the initial photo or to the large load he was carrying in the seat of his flight suit when he impacted the ground...

 

[ls99]

I'd have a load in my flight suit if cruising a few hundred feet off the ground at slow speed attempting to have the airplane rotate towards vertical nose up position controlling attitude and altitude by using thrust levers.

Ah the price of glory.

You can see the approach and rotation in the following video.

YouTube - ChiefmoonNewshawk's Channel

 

[Koolau]

Reminds me of footage they have shown several times on (IIRC) Hist. Chan. Two Russian pilots clip each others wings at an air show; both planes crash in huge fireballs. Then, you see the parachutes. Soon, you see a pilot, in full flight suit walking out of the smoke, carrying his helmet. He pauses, lights up a cigarette, and saunters on. This guy was cool (Kool?). It occurred to me upon at least one viewing that reminding this particular pilot that smoking was bad for his health was a bit redundant.

Sorry to quote myself, but here is at least one view of the incident I mentioned.

YouTube - Air Show Crash MIG 29

 

[Koolau]

And another thing. When I see these narrow escapes, I always wonder if some poor schnook has ever safely ejected and then landed in his own fireball. Bummer! I recall a scene from "The Spirit of St. Louis", with Jimmie Stewart in which (supposedly) Lindbergh bails out when his aircraft runs out of fuel at night. As he floats down, his doomed plane makes a series of circles, narrowly missing him with each pass. Very exciting when I saw the movie at age 10.

 

[SecondCor521]

I saw this crash in person:

YouTube - F16 Crash Idaho 2003

I was about 50 feet away from the camera so this was pretty much exactly what I saw.

The wreckage came very close to clobbering the control tower, as you can see.

There were several thousand spectators on the opposite side of the runways (across from the tower, behind the camera), so it was a good thing the pilot crashed on the other side.

The pilot actually ejected a split second before the crash, and got up and walked away, although it was a few minutes before the crowd knew that so for that brief period of time we thought we had just seen a man die. Very surreal.

2Cor521

 

[Leonidas]

And another thing. When I see these narrow escapes, I always wonder if some poor schnook has ever safely ejected and then landed in his own fireball.

Apparently at least one schnook has so expired. Another thundberbird pilot:

The first was the death of Major Joe Howard flying Thunderbird 3 on June 4, 1972 at Dulles Airport, during Transpo 72. His Phantom (F-4E s/n# 66-0321) experienced a structural failure of the horizontal stabilizer. Maj Howard ejected as the aircraft fell back to earth from about 1,500 feet tail first and descended under a good canopy, but was too close to the explosion fireball and did not survive.

I saw this crash in person:

I was about 50 feet away from the camera so this was pretty much exactly what I saw.

The wreckage came very close to clobbering the control tower, as you can see.

There were several thousand spectators on the opposite side of the runways (across from the tower, behind the camera), so it was a good thing the pilot crashed on the other side.

The pilot actually ejected a split second before the crash, and got up and walked away, although it was a few minutes before the crowd knew that so for that brief period of time we thought we had just seen a man die. Very surreal.

Cool vid - pilot a cool hand as well, hung with it until 0.8 seconds before impact. Weird cause on that accident, according to Wiki. The pilots use above ground level (AGL) readings for their stunts - as in this vid in which he should have entered it at a minimum of 2500 feet AGL. But the instruments only showed altitude in readings above mean sea level (MSL). Since home base was 1100 feet lower MSL than the location of the show, he entered the stunt at only 1600 feet AGL - oops. I'm a tad confused about that cause though, I thought altimeters could be adjusted to reflect the MSL of the actual ground level at a certain location so pilots could minimize that whole running-out-of-sky problem.